Now that the presidential campaign has started in earnest it is time to get down to the specifics. As is the case with most elections the group of voters who are undecided from the time of the conventions until election day will decide the outcome. One of the most contentious issue of the two parties is abortion. Vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is pro-life as well as her running mate John McCain. What has become contentious is the fact that Palin is pro-life in all instances including rape and incest. Cindy McCain the day after the Republican convention has weighed in with her opinion that although she is pro-life, she disagrees with Palin in instances of rape or incest.
There is a problem of consistency here. A pregnancy as a result of rape and incest is still a pregnancy. Pro-choice advocates would argue that an unwanted pregnancy causes a measure of undue hardship and perhaps psychological pain. The pro-life argument is the pregnancy is the act of carrying a human life and to abort is ending that life, no hardship is worth taking a life. Perhaps this is Cindy McCain's position, certainly she considers abortion the termination of life however if she qualifies her position to say that it is okay to end a life in the case of rape and incest the question becomes at what point?
Is there a distinction between life in the womb and outside of it? To Cindy McCain there is. Put it this way, if a child were born and it was the result of rape or incest, does that child have a right to live? What is it about a fetus conceived due to rape and incest and one that is not? If she would agree, and we are sure she does, that taking a life of a child already born has a right to live no matter the circumstance, then why is it suddenly okay if the life were taken inside the womb in the case of rape and incest. The qualifier is incongruent with her overall pro-life position. Her position is thus that any pain, no matter the circumstance
is not a reason to take a life, unless the pain is as great as rape and incest. So therefore it is not so much as taking a life to Cindy McCain, she disagrees with pro-choice position on the measure of pain and hardship a woman should bear. In this instance she doesn't have a right to determine what is real hardship and what is not.
If there's no difference between life in or out of the womb to pro-lifers unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, then it ought to be alright to terminate a life already born for the same reason, there is no other way around it. Pro-lifers with this position have a lot of explaining to do.
